![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfallingI'm doing ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
thirtyforthree for Kira Sakuya/Mudo Setsuna/Mudo Sara from Kaori Yuki's Angel Sanctuary. There will be spoilers in nearly every theme -- given the characters, it's nearly impossible to avoid them! -- and a lot of potentially objectionable content. This is because the source manga has a lot of potentially objectionable content. If incest squicks you, or you know you'll be bothered by some strange and/or negative interpretations of Judeo-Christian theology, you're probably better off not reading these stories.
With that said...
Theme: #19 - Time
Warnings: spoilers!
Note: This ficlet is set pre-manga, during Alexiel's cycle of reincarnations. I haven't written this particular incarnation yet in "Debts," which is why I'm very vague about the historical setting (and even so, I've probably gotten things a bit wrong, since I haven't done proper research yet). I'm also trying to explain the inconsistencies about Alexiel's guardian angel/s, and speculate on why it took Nanatsusaya so long to give Alexiel one clean death.
---------------------------------------------
The Transient and the Eternal: Time
---------------------------------------------
It was a popular, albeit illegal, pastime in heaven for the first few rounds -- watching Alexiel's death. The footage was transmitted in real-time to a secret room in the Thrones' headquarters, in case anything went awry. Then it was meant to be stored under the highest encryption so only the Great Angels could review it. Somehow, extra copies tended to be made and viewed privately in various households.
Angels watched Alexiel be raped and tortured, watched her burn and drown, watched her commit suicide. What they didn't notice was the way someone nearly always tried to rescue her.
Jibril had asked Zaphkiel's permission to join him in overseeing the live transmissions, and he agreed, without either of them explicitly saying anything, to let her edit out the footage of Nanatsusaya's futile attempts to break Uriel's curse. The guardian angels were always reassigned after each incarnation and the control room technicians changed with each death, so nobody else put the pattern together.
After the first few centuries, heaven's attention shifted to internal matters and Alexiel was largely forgotten, even by Sevothtarte. Zaphkiel left the recordings to his staff, who tended to wonder out loud and at length why they had to watch a human get killed.
Jibril continued her deathwatch vigils and edits. She owed that to Alexiel and Lucifer.
During Alexiel's eleventh incarnation, Jibril took the risk of dismissing the control room staff and descending to Assiah bare minutes after Alexiel's death. Her old friend had been burned at the stake by zealots, who would take the appearance of an angel in stride. She opened her gate in the sky and flew down in a blatant attempt to awe the humans.
"Your Savior commanded you to love your neighbors as yourselves, and to turn the other cheek rather than seek revenge. You are all sinners, unworthy of casting stones. What right did you have to condemn this woman?" she asked, gathering Alexiel's charred body into her arms and dousing the sullen flames.
The humans were struck dumb. Jibril flew into the desert before they could gather themselves to answer -- she knew it was her appearance rather than her words that affected them, and she was deathly tired of justifications in God's name.
Then she waited.
Eventually a sandy-haired youth, barely more than a child, walked through the pitiless sun and wavering heat mirages to meet her. "Jibril," he said, setting his lance against the cracked earth.
Jibril inclined her head in return. "Nanatsusaya."
"Have you fallen?" Lucifer's faded reflection asked. "Or is heaven merely looking aside for a moment?"
"The latter. I came to offer some advice. The guardian angels keep you away from Alexiel for fear that active interference might skew her punishment. Because Uriel vanished shortly after Alexiel's trial, nobody can renew the curse if it shatters. There's a true chance that you can save her... but only if you remove the guardian first."
Nanatsusaya leaned on his lance. "In borrowed bodies I lack the strength to challenge an angel, and as a spirit I can't channel power into physical attacks. If I had someone to wield me..." He gave Jibril a weighing glance.
She shook her head, not letting herself mourn Lucifer's lost power; unbound, surely he could have fixed this abomination long before. "My answer remains the same: I'm more valuable in heaven, unsuspected. Find a human ally, or find an astral weapon."
Nanatsusaya snorted, almost a true laugh. "Alexiel is my only master -- even you would be a desperation measure -- and no human could wield me and stay sane long enough to be useful. It will have to be an astral weapon, then, and we're hard to find unless we're in battle or looking for new masters. This may take a long time." He sighed, sounding very human; Jibril wondered how much of that was the body and how much was true change.
"We have time in plenty," Jibril told him. "We have nothing but time."
"But not forever," Nanatsusaya said. "Everything ends. And not all time is measured in aeons; sometimes a bare second makes the difference between victory and death."
"In that case, I suggest you make good use of your seconds," Jibril said, "and I hope our next meeting is under happier circumstances."
Nanatsusaya shrugged. "If you wish. It makes no difference to me." He turned away from Jibril and began to dig a shallow trench with his lance blade, evidently a grave for Alexiel's corpse. Jibril watched for a moment. Then she opened a gate back to heaven.
The next day, Zaphkiel sent her a private message: "Technical failure in control room, hours 19 through 24; no staff present to correct error in time. Regrettably, footage of Alexiel's last minutes and ensuing confusion lost. Please be advised such failure is unlikely to occur again."
Jibril burned the note.
Centuries passed, and Nanatsusaya came no closer to saving Alexiel. Jibril began to wonder if the curse had somehow overheard their conversation and was deliberately incarnating Alexiel in areas with no astral weapons. She knew this was pure superstition -- Uriel's curse wasn't alive; it had no conscious will -- but she couldn't shake the idea. Meanwhile, time in Assiah spun on, toward the prophesied end of the world. No prophecy was infallible, but still...
Jibril prayed.
When Alexiel's next death drew near -- torture and a lingering death for attempted escape with her samurai lover -- Jibril almost missed the significance of the lover's family sword. The prostitute and the samurai were fleeing through the night, guards in close pursuit, before Jibril realized that Zaphkiel's computers were tracking three auras, not two. The sword was an astral blade, humming in anticipation of battle.
The samurai died. Nanatsusaya possessed him.
There were moments when time was measured in seconds, when a mere breath or the blink of an eye separated victory from disaster.
Even angelic bodies are mostly water, and Jibril had the added advantage of years spent watching Raphael manipulate the fine processes of life. It was absurdly easy to knock the control room technicians unconscious. Nobody but Jibril watched as Nanatsusaya tracked the guardian angel, who was leading a pair of guards toward Alexiel's hiding place. Nobody but Jibril watched as Nanatsusaya slaughtered the humans. The guardian angel sent a distress call, but nobody answered; Jibril disconnected the transmitter for good measure.
She watched Nanatsusaya kill the hapless angel. He wouldn't care; Lucifer never cared about people who got in his way. Alexiel might never know, and might consider it rightful vengeance in any case. But Jibril would remember.
Nanatsusaya in the samurai's body made love to Alexiel in the prostitute's human form. Jibril watched.
Nanatsusaya killed Alexiel cleanly. For the first time in her cycle of incarnations, she died in peace. Jibril watched.
Nanatsusaya touched his face, touched the tears seeping from cold eyes, and then looked upward, toward heaven. He saluted with the samurai's astral blade, and walked away.
Jibril shut down the transmission, deleted all the tapes, and swamped the machinery with seawater, shorting out the delicate electronics. Then she sent the water back, leaving no telltale trace of damp, and slumped in her chair, feigning unconsciousness. Sevothtarte would suspect her, of course, but without proof she should be able to evade official punishment.
Uriel's curse was far from broken, but the first blow had been struck. Something had cracked, ever so slightly, and now Jibril had proof that Alexiel's fate wasn't unchangeable. Whatever the consequences might be, she didn't regret a single moment.
---------------------------------------------
End of Story
Cross-posted here onthirtyforthree
thirtyforthree for Kira Sakuya/Mudo Setsuna/Mudo Sara from Kaori Yuki's Angel Sanctuary. There will be spoilers in nearly every theme -- given the characters, it's nearly impossible to avoid them! -- and a lot of potentially objectionable content. This is because the source manga has a lot of potentially objectionable content. If incest squicks you, or you know you'll be bothered by some strange and/or negative interpretations of Judeo-Christian theology, you're probably better off not reading these stories.With that said...
Theme: #19 - Time
Warnings: spoilers!
Note: This ficlet is set pre-manga, during Alexiel's cycle of reincarnations. I haven't written this particular incarnation yet in "Debts," which is why I'm very vague about the historical setting (and even so, I've probably gotten things a bit wrong, since I haven't done proper research yet). I'm also trying to explain the inconsistencies about Alexiel's guardian angel/s, and speculate on why it took Nanatsusaya so long to give Alexiel one clean death.
---------------------------------------------
The Transient and the Eternal: Time
---------------------------------------------
It was a popular, albeit illegal, pastime in heaven for the first few rounds -- watching Alexiel's death. The footage was transmitted in real-time to a secret room in the Thrones' headquarters, in case anything went awry. Then it was meant to be stored under the highest encryption so only the Great Angels could review it. Somehow, extra copies tended to be made and viewed privately in various households.
Angels watched Alexiel be raped and tortured, watched her burn and drown, watched her commit suicide. What they didn't notice was the way someone nearly always tried to rescue her.
Jibril had asked Zaphkiel's permission to join him in overseeing the live transmissions, and he agreed, without either of them explicitly saying anything, to let her edit out the footage of Nanatsusaya's futile attempts to break Uriel's curse. The guardian angels were always reassigned after each incarnation and the control room technicians changed with each death, so nobody else put the pattern together.
After the first few centuries, heaven's attention shifted to internal matters and Alexiel was largely forgotten, even by Sevothtarte. Zaphkiel left the recordings to his staff, who tended to wonder out loud and at length why they had to watch a human get killed.
Jibril continued her deathwatch vigils and edits. She owed that to Alexiel and Lucifer.
During Alexiel's eleventh incarnation, Jibril took the risk of dismissing the control room staff and descending to Assiah bare minutes after Alexiel's death. Her old friend had been burned at the stake by zealots, who would take the appearance of an angel in stride. She opened her gate in the sky and flew down in a blatant attempt to awe the humans.
"Your Savior commanded you to love your neighbors as yourselves, and to turn the other cheek rather than seek revenge. You are all sinners, unworthy of casting stones. What right did you have to condemn this woman?" she asked, gathering Alexiel's charred body into her arms and dousing the sullen flames.
The humans were struck dumb. Jibril flew into the desert before they could gather themselves to answer -- she knew it was her appearance rather than her words that affected them, and she was deathly tired of justifications in God's name.
Then she waited.
Eventually a sandy-haired youth, barely more than a child, walked through the pitiless sun and wavering heat mirages to meet her. "Jibril," he said, setting his lance against the cracked earth.
Jibril inclined her head in return. "Nanatsusaya."
"Have you fallen?" Lucifer's faded reflection asked. "Or is heaven merely looking aside for a moment?"
"The latter. I came to offer some advice. The guardian angels keep you away from Alexiel for fear that active interference might skew her punishment. Because Uriel vanished shortly after Alexiel's trial, nobody can renew the curse if it shatters. There's a true chance that you can save her... but only if you remove the guardian first."
Nanatsusaya leaned on his lance. "In borrowed bodies I lack the strength to challenge an angel, and as a spirit I can't channel power into physical attacks. If I had someone to wield me..." He gave Jibril a weighing glance.
She shook her head, not letting herself mourn Lucifer's lost power; unbound, surely he could have fixed this abomination long before. "My answer remains the same: I'm more valuable in heaven, unsuspected. Find a human ally, or find an astral weapon."
Nanatsusaya snorted, almost a true laugh. "Alexiel is my only master -- even you would be a desperation measure -- and no human could wield me and stay sane long enough to be useful. It will have to be an astral weapon, then, and we're hard to find unless we're in battle or looking for new masters. This may take a long time." He sighed, sounding very human; Jibril wondered how much of that was the body and how much was true change.
"We have time in plenty," Jibril told him. "We have nothing but time."
"But not forever," Nanatsusaya said. "Everything ends. And not all time is measured in aeons; sometimes a bare second makes the difference between victory and death."
"In that case, I suggest you make good use of your seconds," Jibril said, "and I hope our next meeting is under happier circumstances."
Nanatsusaya shrugged. "If you wish. It makes no difference to me." He turned away from Jibril and began to dig a shallow trench with his lance blade, evidently a grave for Alexiel's corpse. Jibril watched for a moment. Then she opened a gate back to heaven.
The next day, Zaphkiel sent her a private message: "Technical failure in control room, hours 19 through 24; no staff present to correct error in time. Regrettably, footage of Alexiel's last minutes and ensuing confusion lost. Please be advised such failure is unlikely to occur again."
Jibril burned the note.
Centuries passed, and Nanatsusaya came no closer to saving Alexiel. Jibril began to wonder if the curse had somehow overheard their conversation and was deliberately incarnating Alexiel in areas with no astral weapons. She knew this was pure superstition -- Uriel's curse wasn't alive; it had no conscious will -- but she couldn't shake the idea. Meanwhile, time in Assiah spun on, toward the prophesied end of the world. No prophecy was infallible, but still...
Jibril prayed.
When Alexiel's next death drew near -- torture and a lingering death for attempted escape with her samurai lover -- Jibril almost missed the significance of the lover's family sword. The prostitute and the samurai were fleeing through the night, guards in close pursuit, before Jibril realized that Zaphkiel's computers were tracking three auras, not two. The sword was an astral blade, humming in anticipation of battle.
The samurai died. Nanatsusaya possessed him.
There were moments when time was measured in seconds, when a mere breath or the blink of an eye separated victory from disaster.
Even angelic bodies are mostly water, and Jibril had the added advantage of years spent watching Raphael manipulate the fine processes of life. It was absurdly easy to knock the control room technicians unconscious. Nobody but Jibril watched as Nanatsusaya tracked the guardian angel, who was leading a pair of guards toward Alexiel's hiding place. Nobody but Jibril watched as Nanatsusaya slaughtered the humans. The guardian angel sent a distress call, but nobody answered; Jibril disconnected the transmitter for good measure.
She watched Nanatsusaya kill the hapless angel. He wouldn't care; Lucifer never cared about people who got in his way. Alexiel might never know, and might consider it rightful vengeance in any case. But Jibril would remember.
Nanatsusaya in the samurai's body made love to Alexiel in the prostitute's human form. Jibril watched.
Nanatsusaya killed Alexiel cleanly. For the first time in her cycle of incarnations, she died in peace. Jibril watched.
Nanatsusaya touched his face, touched the tears seeping from cold eyes, and then looked upward, toward heaven. He saluted with the samurai's astral blade, and walked away.
Jibril shut down the transmission, deleted all the tapes, and swamped the machinery with seawater, shorting out the delicate electronics. Then she sent the water back, leaving no telltale trace of damp, and slumped in her chair, feigning unconsciousness. Sevothtarte would suspect her, of course, but without proof she should be able to evade official punishment.
Uriel's curse was far from broken, but the first blow had been struck. Something had cracked, ever so slightly, and now Jibril had proof that Alexiel's fate wasn't unchangeable. Whatever the consequences might be, she didn't regret a single moment.
---------------------------------------------
End of Story
Cross-posted here on
thirtyforthree